Concentrating on your reputation has become more important than ever. Follow these quick and easy steps to make the Google bots happy and increase your traffic.

10 Tips to Help You Rank in Google

1. Dazzling Content: Your content is the corner stone to obtaining traffic. Write quality articles that speak to your readers…and yes grammar counts. Google penalizes sites for repetitious material, so keep it fresh and unique! Beautiful images complete the picture and remember stealing content is a no no! Interesting, well written articles will help with relationship building and will eventually translate into serious traffic. Google loves new content so publish often, at least once a week.

2. Backlinks are the Backbone (Off Page Optimization): One great backlink from a highly trafficked source is worth a ton of backlinks from little known sites. Many of us dream of that Forbes backlink, but until then, you will have to build backlinks through strategy and patience. 5 super easy places to start are LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon & Growth Hackers. Post links to your articles in all of these spaces. Google also loves Youtube. So if you have video content, use it! Another fun and interesting way to obtain backlinks is to sponsor a photo competition. Readers love to win prizes and this translates into increased involvement and awareness of your brand. The submissions can also be added to Instagram, Flickr and Pinterest to see a dramatic surge of engagement. This is very complex topic and there are countless ways you can go about obtaining backlinks. Your relationships and reputation are key to maximizing this incredible tool.

3. Keywords are Key (On Page Optimization): Get familiar with Google Analytics – it’s your friend. Targeting the wrong words is a simple mistake that can be avoided early on. Don’t shoot for single keywords with lots of competition. The secret is to develop your content around a keyword theme. Shoot for long tail keywords with low/moderate competition. Do some research and find out how people are locating your articles and include that information, if possible, in the meat of your posting – but keep in mind content is king. Don’t lose credibility by overloading articles with keywords.

4. Generate a Sitemap: Your site will be crawled by robots, so a sitemap is integral to any plan to obtain optimum Google results.

5. Optimize Site Speed: People don’t want to wait around for your page to load. Chances are if there is a delay, a new user will go elsewhere (and you don’t want high bounce rates). Make sure your photos are light, avoid Flash, don’t overload your site with ads and, condense bulky code to improve user experience.

6. Social Media & Socializing: Avidly share your content on social media and in forums. Find blogs that are highly ranked in your niche and get involved. Chat with fellow bloggers, share your ideas and introduce yourself and your content. These connections can boost your reputation, pushing your traffic through the roof! Backlinks, retweets, shares and likes connected to your content will help achieve Google gold.

7. Confirm Google Authorship: You can validate your content by linking it to your Google + profile. This is a way to avoid being penalized by Google for stolen content – and yes this happens more than you could imagine. Click here for more information about how to do this: Google Authorship

8. AUTHENTIC Guest Blogging: Google recently cracked down on spam-heavy guest blogging networks, so if you are tempted to do this, don’t! Unfortunately the actions of a few bad apples have ruined some of the perks for all of us. Guest blogging is still great to raise your profile and expose yourself to an audience you would not otherwise have access to. A great approach is to submit some super focused content to top-notch sources.

9. Submit your blog to Web Directories: Getting noticed on the web is the tough. To make it a bit easier for the bots to crawl your page, submit your sitemap to Google, Alexa, Bing & Yahoo.

10. Google+: Postings on Google plus function like mini blogs and as we know – Google loves Google. If you don’t already have a Google+ account set one up now. What are you waiting for? The key is to standout – which means you need a great format and catchy headings. Improving your standing in Google+ is truly worth the time and effort!

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